Immigrant unemployment: The more education, the bigger the gap

Jan. 10, 2014 –  Global News

Friday’s employment numbers may’ve been lacklustre. But the job search is far bleaker for new Canadians: Years after the recession officially ended, you’re still more likely to be out of a job if you’re an immigrant.

And the gap between immigrants and Canadian-born workers is biggest for those with the most educationUniversity graduates who’ve been in Canada five years or less are more than four times more likely to be unemployed than their Canadian counterparts.

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Who hires temporary foreign workers? You’d be surprised

Anna Mehler Paperny and Jacques Bourbeau, Global News

Todd Bender doesn’t seem like he’d be in the market for temporary foreign workers: He’s executive director of CityKidz, a faith-driven group working with young people in inner-city Hamilton. His focus is local.

But three years ago, while hiring a youth coordinator, the hiring team realized their preferred candidate – a young woman from the Bahamas who had been studying in Canada – didn’t have the right visa to work in the country.

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In Jason Kenney’s immigration system, the labour market calls the shots

Photo by Fernando Morales/The Globe and Mail

Thursday, April 5, 2012 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Jason Kenney has had it with incremental measures.

“It frustrates the hell out of me,” the Immigration Minister told The Globe and Mail’s editorial board on Wednesday. “We’re bringing hundreds of thousands of people into the country to end up, many of them, unemployed or underemployed in an economy where there are acute labour shortages.”

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Saskatoon-bound: Newcomers leading westward shift

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

When Bangladeshi-born Sayful Ahmed decided to come to Canada for a fresh start, he didn’t head to Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal.

He chose Saskatoon.

The city of 234,000 people, which has garnered a reputation for seeking newcomers and having plenty of work, was just too appealing to pass up.

“My friends live here, they said it’s a good place – for living, for job opportunities. …That’s why I chose Saskatoon,” said Mr. Ahmed, who arrived three weeks ago. “So far, so good.”

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Recession hit hard, recovery came slow for immigrants

Tuesday, October 5, 2010 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY and TAVIA GRANT

As employment grows with a reviving economy, so does the unemployment gap between the country’s highly educated newcomers and their Canadian counterparts.

Among university graduates, recent immigrants were hit hardest by the recession, and new research shows they’re still at a disadvantage compared to Canadian-born university grads as the job market picks up.

The employment gap between newcomers and people born in Canada is greatest among those with the highest credentials and educational backgrounds, according to a Community Foundations of Canada report to be released on Tuesday.

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Failure to tap into immigrants’ skills costs billions

Thursday, June 10, 2010
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

In Nigeria, he helped design the athletes village for Abuja’s All-Africa Games.

But three years after moving to Canada in 2007 with a pregnant wife and big dreams, Yisola Taiwo has yet to land his first architecture job. His wife, Bunmi Sofoluwe-Taiwo, still hasn’t been able to find work after leaving her career with the Lagos government.

“Last year was terrible,” Mr. Taiwo said. An internship ended; he spent more than a year on employment insurance and working for no pay at a Toronto architecture firm.

In May, he started a two-month contract at the Diebold Company of Canada, working with architectural drawings to design building security systems in Mississauga. It’s not a bad gig, but he longs for something in his field.

The Toronto region has long boasted about its role as Canada’s diversity hub. But Toronto is doing a worse job of integrating immigrants than it was two decades ago, and it’s costing the economy estimated billions of dollars a year, according to a report being released Thursday by the city’s Board of Trade.

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Job shortage adds to Haiti’s misery

Saturday, January 30, 2010 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

PORT-AU-PRINCE — In a folding chair among the mattresses and laundry lines outside the wreckage of his family’s house, Olivier Jean-Rénauld is writing his résumé.

The 33-year-old computer science graduate and his friend Chéry Luckson are applying for jobs with Médecins Sans Frontières, which has put out calls for logistics workers to help with the NGO’s massive aid effort. The jobs are part-time, Mr. Luckson acknowledges. But when no one has a job and the country’s already faltering economy has effectively ceased to exist, it’s better than nothing.

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In China, out-of-work migrants destabilizing

Friday, January 23, 2009 – San Francisco Chronicle

Anna Mehler Paperny

SHANGHAI

On a recent Sunday morning, the scene on the K290 train heading west from Shanghai to China’s rural heartland was one of chaos.

The hard-seat cars teemed with passengers, many of them migrant workers fighting to place their baggage in overhead compartments or find space to sit in the aisles.

Chun yun, or spring festival transport, is the world’s largest human migration, involving hundreds of millions of people annually traveling home before the Lunar New Year. But this year, migrants returning home before the Year of the Ox begins Monday got an early start after hundreds of thousands of workers lost their city jobs.

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